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German and American intelligence services knew where Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann was hiding eight years before Israeli agents apprehended him, according to documents released this week.

Daily paper Bild reported on Saturday that it had succeeded in getting the German federal intelligence service, the BND, to release microfilm of documents which show it knew how to get to the man known as the architect of the Holocaust, back in 1952.

“SS colonel EICHMANN is not to be found in Egypt but is residing in Argentina under the fake name CLEMENS. E's address is known to the editor of the German newspaper ‘Der Weg' in Argentina,” says an index card dated 1952, according to the paper.

There is also evidence to show that the BND told the Americans about Eichmann's flight to Argentina – CIA documents released in 2006 show that the BND told a US agent of his whereabouts in 1958.

Eichmann, who was arrested by Israeli agents in 1960, was hiding in Argentina under the name Ricardo Klement. He had escaped Germany with the help of Nazi sympathisers and had even managed to smuggle his family out of Austria to join him in Argentina.

After Mossad agents took him to Israel, the new Jewish state put him on trial and sentenced him to death in 1961, hanging him in 1962.

“This index card is in fact a sensation. Until now it was not known that the West German secret service knew about Eichmann's hiding place eight years before his arrest,” historian Bettina Stangeth, who has been working on a new book about Eichmann for the last six years, told Bild.